Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:08:37.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Measuring sincerity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2009

Mary Margaret McCabe
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

SOCRATES' METHODS

The early dialogues present Socrates in conversation with various people – sophists, religious experts, generals, old friends and new adversaries. Socrates insistently questions his interlocutors, about what they are doing and why. He asks because he wants to know and because he claims to be ignorant himself. Ironically he commends his interlocutor's expertise and then, by careful analysis, shows his interlocutor to be in an even worse cognitive case. For when the interlocutor defines some ethical notion Socrates elicits from him a whole collection of his sincere beliefs and assumptions, and then shows that those beliefs are inconsistent with the proposed definition. This, famously, results in dismay, irritation, even apoplectic horror on the part of the interlocutor.

You can see why they gave Socrates the hemlock. His methods are not only maddening for his victims; they also seem pretty destructive. For showing a set of propositions inconsistent shows that at least one of them must be false; but it does not show which one. The elenchus does not seem to offer positive progress unless the exposure of inconsistency is itself positive (e.g. Gorgias 482b–c). So the elenchus may be barren and negative. Matters may be made worse when Socrates insists that he knows nothing anyway (e.g. Apology 21b–c; Euthyphro 5a–b; Charmides 165b–c). Why does he do that? Does he intend to undermine anything his interlocutor believes, and thus save him from the horrors of doxosophy? Then Socrates' arguments may be therapeutic; but are they any more productive than sophistry? Or does Socrates have some knowledge himself which protects the argument from the waste of scepticism? If he does, how is that knowledge immune from the elenchus?

Type
Chapter
Information
Plato and his Predecessors
The Dramatisation of Reason
, pp. 25 - 59
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×